Now, THIS Is A "Fair" Tax

The President is going after Cayman Islander "POBox" Corps, amongst others:

Going after companies and individuals who funnel money to tax havens in the Cayman Islands or Swiss banks is just one part of the proposal. Much of Mr. Obama's plan aims to limit what the president considers the tax avoidance of multinational corporations who use subsidiaries and foreign branches to avoid paying higher taxes in the United States.

The White House, in a release detailing the plan, said the current tax system "is rife with opportunities to evade and avoid taxes through offshore tax havens."

There's no essential sin in trying to pay the minimum tax one is entitled to. Also, nobody deserves to get fleeced.

But corprations have been getting away with sucking profits out of America for so much and for so long that, even though it's legal, it's un-American. And it's you, me, and every one we know (speaking for us proles, that is) that's paying for it – either through increased taxes or decreased services. Usually decreased services.

I don't know about any of you folks, but I get tired of sacrificing so that some "too-big-to-fail" corporation gets to have even bigger profits.

Legal tax reductions can be good. But just like you can actually get poisoned if you drink too much water too fast, too much of any good thing isn't eventually good at all.

Corporations have been making bank for a very long time now on a favorable business climate (so favorable, for instance, that Oregon will allow you to skive on out of here for a single $10 bill), and its time that they pitched in thier fair share to maintain the edifice that made their success possible.

It's past time, actually.

Somebody's Gotta Go: New Reality Show Makes Me Hate Us All

I think I've just seen proof that our civilization does not deserve to survive.

The buzz is that FOX is coming up with something on the order of an abomination. No mere trifle this, the show, said to be titled Somebody's Gotta Go, is all about people losing their job, and their fellows slipping the knife in.

Bob Sassone at TV Squad:

Someone's Gotta Go will feature employees of a real company who give a pay cut to a fellow employee and vote out a fellow employee at the end of each show. Please note that these are real employees at a real company who are really going to lose their jobs, not to mention have their personal details revealed on national television.

I was going to link to what Sarah Ball at Newsweek's PopVox column said about it, but she seemed to enjoy the idea too much. If this idea wasn't appalling enough on its face not to make its sordid way from the Netherlands (where worldwide TV purveyor Endemol concocted this foul thing) to be pitched, straight-faced and unironically, to a TV network in the USA, then what it says about us as a culture is too ugly to put to words.

Seriously, I don't have a funny rejoinder to this one. This just makes me sad. Seriously, it makes me sad.

But don't let me harsh your vibe. If this sort of program sounds like fun to you, watch away. You're the one who'll have to look yourself in the mirror.

Abandon handbasket; we've arrived in Hell.

Cash Gifting is Back. Don't Fall For It!

So, I'm getting ready to go to bed, getting one more check in on the email, stuff like that, and I'm listening to The POJ, and I hear a report on an old scheme designed to separate the desperate from their money.

It's "cash gifting". The report mentioned some staggering amonut of videos online, so I surfed on over to YouTube.com, and plugged in the words "Cash Gifting" – and the response said it was able to come up with just over twenty thousand videos about cash gifting.

And it's tempting to think that "well, yes, that's the sort of thing you expect to see in hard times", and write it off. As liberals and Official Smart People™, I'd like to point out that we can do better.

I've never been in a pyramid or cash gifting program. I don't know anyone who ever was, and I don't want to know anyone who ever does. So I speak as I find here. Here's what it's all about.

"Cash Gifting" is yet another case of old wine in new skins. Ever since the original chain letters (you know, the one where you send $5 to each of five names on a list and add your name to the bottom of a list and mail that off to five or so friends) and Make.Money.Fast, the chain letter-pyramid scheme has morphed just enough to seem legal and stay ahead of people who find out about it.

The current idea is a variation on an old theme. The way the schemes make the dodge look legit is to use the concept of a gift or a game to establish consent amongst participants and evade taxes (you can't tax a gift, after all, right?).

In the 70s and 80s, something called the "Airplane Game" was popular. This was a four-level tree, the top being the "Captain", the second level (2 participants) being the "co-pilots", the third level (4 participants) being the "Crew", and the fourth level (8 participants) were known as "passengers". When the passenger level filled out, each paying typically $1000 to get on board (that was usually it, but there were probably as many different costs-of-admission as there were schemes out there), all the money gets passed up the tree to the Captain, who "pilots off" and goes away with his gifted loot. The tree splits in two, the two "Co Pilots" become "Pilots", and each tree works to fill its passenger level.

It seems a reasonable plan. Since the money is gifts, they can't be taxed; since you only have to get 8 suckers on the bottom to complete the tree, it seems to be immune to that geometric progression that makes pyramid structures untenable because by the thirteenth generation you need over 13 Billion members to keep the pyramid going.

But when you think about it, the limited nature of the gifting tree doesn't prevent saturation, just forestalls it a bit. Because when that pilot flies off with his cash, the two airplanes now have to find sixteen people to let the new pilots take wing. And sixteen more for each if that pilot can take off. And so on.

It's not too long before enough burned people exist to bring the whole airline down.

Now, I told you all that to tell you this. Based on my hearing about the new programs on The POJ and my search on YouTube, it would seem gifting programs are back. These days, they're called The People's Program, and they call them a a gifting program. Video after video with similar claims, loaded with similarly-worded positive reviews, and links to similar websites, many of whom use identical graphics! Images of happy smug people fanning Benajmins in front of yo face and having their pictures on DVD cases promoting the program abound.

The catch these days to try to make it legal is that they try to leverage the searching power and self-selecting nature of internet users to promise you that only people looking to get into and profit from gifitng programs will see your appeal. This is supposed to keep it legit by not attracting people who don't know what it is you're talking about.

It will still get you in trouble. I've read a lot about these programs, and it seems that the "tax free gift" claim and the targeted interest concept has been used so much that the IRS sees it for what it is; an attempt to get money and evade paying taxes for it.

And even if you are daring and bold and desperate enough to give it a shot, consider that at least one estimate I've seen suggest that no matter how large the model becomes, 88% of participants will likely lose money.

The only way to be sure you're going to make money in a gifting scheme, really, is to start one. And then you're (sorry for the bluntness) just hoodwinking money away from other people who are just as desperate as you. Can you look yourself in the mirror and live with yourself? I know I couldn't.

Once again, I've never been in such a scheme (nothing magical about that, just my morbid interest in toxic social structures leading to voluminious reading, so I was luckily forewarned) and I never will be because it's logically and ethically suspect. And I've never known a person to be suckered by a Gifting Club, and I never want to know one.

But when I hear that there are tens of thousands of videos on YouTube with a high-tech version of the same old pyramid plan, I have to speak up.

And that's what I'm doing.

If you're tempted, don't do it. Please.

You only think you're badly off now. If you're lucky, you'll just lose your money.

Don't do it.

If You Think TriMet Service Cuts Are Bad ...

... just be glad you don't live in St. Louis, where the transit system is getting ab-so-lute-ly gutted:

The service area for this multibillion-dollar regional asset will shrink by two thirds, literally overnight.

The Metro transit agency faces an operating deficit of $45 million this year, which is expected to reach $50 million next year. Nearly one in every four of its 2,300 employees will be laid off in the coming weeks. Many highly skilled and productive employees already are being poached by transit systems in other regions.

Service will end at 2,300 of the 9,000 bus stops and shelters on Missouri’s side of the system; service in Illinois, which is fully funded, won’t be affected. A bus fleet of 320 will shrink to about 140. MetroLink light rail riders will see one-third fewer trains during rush hour. Call-A-Ride service for the disabled will be slashed.

Most city and inner-ring suburban service will be cut 25 percent to 75 percent. Most of St. Louis County outside the Interstate 270 loop will receive no service. Limited service to the Chesterfield Valley was salvaged through the end of the year as a result of a last-minute deal between Metro and far-sighted municipal leaders and local businesses.

The article at StLouisToday was written on the 27th. These service cuts are already in effect. Now, I'm no transit planner and have actually not enough knowledge to be useful, but I'm guessing if you reduced weekend TriMet service to a handful of Portland-only routes, permanently on Sunday schedules, cut back MAX service to half-hourly on all lines, reduced fixed-route service to Portland Only except during rush hours, restricted TriMet LIFT customers to 8 am to 5 pm service, six days a week, you might come close to the pain that St Louis is feeling right now.

I'm not a fan of the cutbacks TriMet's proposing, but – for now, anyway – we're doing better than most, even with the much-criticized (but still beloved) Streetcar and Aerial Tram.

If the Federal Government really wants to step up with our tax dollars and rebuild the country the Republicans have been tearing down since Reagan, a good place to start would be by funding mass transit so that all cities have decent (if not ideal) service levels.

In other words, start treating mass transit as a necessity, not as an option or a luxury. Because, if you're interested in having viable cities, it really is a necessity.

On Public Assistance In TN? Forget About Winning The Lottery.

In our latest example of the pure hatred and disdain the Republicans have for the poor, comes this amazing concept from the state of Tennessee. According to reports we've heard over the weekend, Tennessee State Rep. Stacey Campfield (R-But What Did You Expect) wants to harsh one of the few buzzes poor folks get:

"This bill prohibits issuance of lottery prizes in the amount of $600 or more to any person who receives state or federal economic or medical assistance due to indigency."

Arrie Chamberlain says the measure is unfair. She plays the lottery every week, is on the government's food stamps program and has a job.

"If I work and go out and earn a living, why can't I spend the money? Everybody else gets to. Just because I make less money and have more obligations doesn't mean the state can tell me how to spend my money. "

If there's anything that makes my blood boil, I mean really boil, it's the way we expect The Poor to be more virtuous than us, and if we don't, well, we despise them. The Poor aren't Poor because they're evil, they're poor because, unlike you (the editorial You, please note, not the personal You) their chances didn't work out. And we aren't necessarily any better than them, just a bit luckier.

Now, I don't condone addiction or frittering away, but I also don't begrudge poor people the occaisional drink or lottery ticket. If my tax money is supporting someone having just a little fun, so be it. The mass of poor people who dissipate themselves themselves through drink and fun is a myth, just like the Cadillac-driving "welfare queen" that the Reagan cosmology gave us.

(for the record, I drink sparingly, and never play the Lottery.)

Think about it. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you don't want to just kick back, enjoy, and dampen the pain for a little while.

And that's not all, of course. Rep Campfield's idea of social engineering is to tell poor people who are taking any public assistance, even if they earn most of thier own money and just can't make ends meet, that they can't win the lottery.

Poor? Tough. Suck it. Win the lottery? Screw you.

The only thing Stacey Campfield deserves for this is the big middle finger.